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This week we’re going to discuss the Iranian nuclear deal. Just joking. We’re going to discuss eggs. And, specifically, boiled eggs, because I received an email the other day from a nice chap called Alan which felt rather like a cry for help.

“Many years ago,” began Alan’s email, “I worked in a prep school. On my first morning we had boiled eggs, I bashed the top of mine and cut the top off with a knife – very elegantly.” So far, so good. A delicious boiled egg for breakfast. What could be better? Two boiled eggs and some buttery soldiers, perhaps, but Alan only mentions the one egg.

The denouement of Alan’s short story comes with Matron, who spotted him grappling with his egg and immediately told the new boys to ignore him and, instead, strike the top of their eggs with a spoon and then pick the flakes of shell off the top, “thus revealing the peeled top of the egg. Was I a pleb or was she a prissy nanny?”

Poor old Alan concluded his email by telling me he’d been pondering this question for 40 years. Forty years of worrying about eggs! So, Alan, I’m thrilled you’ve asked and let’s put an end to your agony.

Spoon basher: perhaps the most satisfying way to get into your morning egg?Credit:
Stephen Giardina / Alamy Stock Photo

To begin with, I have to say I’m glad that you’re eating an egg in the first place. Eggs are a much grander breakfast than, say, a bowl of Special K and poshos have always gone mad for them. The Queen Mother’s favourite dish of all was a calorific extravaganza called Eggs Drumkilbo which featured chopped boiled egg mixed with sweet chunks of lobster, tomatoes and aspic, smothered in a variation of Marie Rose sauce.

Sloaney sorts still like an egg for supper because it’s comforting and reminds them of being upstairs in the nursery. Although, Alan, ideally, the eggs should be your own (I mean from your chickens, I don’t mean to be personal), and not from a shop, like that scene in Gosford Park where Maggie Smith decries the “bought marmalade.”

How long you cook your boiled egg I will leave up to you. I don’t want to be too bossy because the runniness of a yolk is a sensitive choice, up there with whether you take Communion or whether you’re a bath or a shower person. My friend, Laura Freeman, is soon to publish the most moving, most evocative book about recovering from anorexia called The Reading Cure in which she says three-and-a-half minutes is perfection, having been inspired by Siegfried Sassoon’s Sherston trilogy. Delia Smith caused national mayhem some years ago by instructing us all to leave an egg in gently boiling water for six minutes. Each to their own.

But then, how to get into this egg? After much wrangling with this issue, Alan, I have decided that the answer isn’t to lop the top off with a knife. Nor is it to thwack the shell and then pick the pieces off, getting third-degree burns on your fingers.

Do not to submerge your soldier with such enthusiasm that yolk rises up and cascades over its shell - not only because that looks grubby, but because it’s a waste of yolk

The answer lies in a gadget called an egg topper. It’s a faintly medical-looking, stainless steel device that you can find on Amazon, and it cuts neatly into the eggshell and removes the top. No blistered finger pads, no mess, no wasted egg.

You need a bit of practice with this gadget but once you’ve got the knack of it the only thing you need to remember is not to submerge your soldier with such enthusiasm that yolk rises up and cascades over its shell, trickling down into the eggcup. Not only because that looks grubby, but because it’s a waste of yolk.

Because it’s December we will shortly be inundated with articles telling us what we should eat for breakfast on Christmas Day. Suggestions will include slithers of smoked salmon, spiced kedgeree, smoky kippers and so on. But before the onslaught of 43 million calories over a turkey lunch, why not consider a plain boiled egg and try out an egg topper? Ask Father Christmas for one. He always seems very fond of a kitchen gadget, along with the tangerines and chocolate coins.